Betty Marginson interviewed by Ann Turner [sound recording]

Betty May Marginson, secondary school special education teacher, Labor counselor on Hawthorn Local Council since mid-1970's, speaks of her parents' backgrounds, her childhood in Melbourne, how as the last child in the family they could afford to let her finish high school which she completed in 1939, how she attended teachers college but found her own standards compromised, how she took up an arts course at Melbourne University from 1943, her involvement in the Labor Club and the Student Representative Council, the influence of Manning Clark, how she moved into teaching at technical college, how she taught matriculating students at Taylor's Teaching College but left because the teaching was too restrictive, her return to teaching around 1955 at Eltham High where she later taught Phillip Adams and got him his first position in an advertising agency, how she spent the next 10 years or so raising the family, her return in the mid-1960's teaching migrant children and developed into a special needs teacher over the next 12 years, in 1972 began her involvement in local government issues when she stood as a Labour candidate for Hawthorn local council, her tactics in surviving local politics.